Interesting

I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1598886,00.html?cnn=yes

All of Tehran was outraged. Everywhere I went yesterday, the talk vibrated with indignation over the film 300 — a movie no one in Iran has seen but everyone seems to know about since it became a major box office surprise in the U.S. As I stood in line for a full hour to buy ajeel, a mixture of dried fruits and nuts traditional to the start of Persian new year festivities, I felt the entire queue, composed of housewives with pet dogs, teenagers, and clerks from a nearby ministry, shake with fury. I hadn't even heard of the film until that morning when a screed about it came on the radio, so I was able to nod darkly with the rest of the shoppers, savoring a moment of public accord so rare in Tehran. Everywhere else I went, from the dentist to the flower shop, Iranians buzzed with resentment at the film's depictions of Persians, adamant that the movie was secretly funded by the U.S. government to prepare Americans for going to war against Iran. "Otherwise why now, if not to turn their people against us?" demanded an elderly lady buying tuberoses. "Yes, truly it is a grave offense," I said, shaking my own bunch of irises.

I returned home to discover my family in a similar state of pique. My sister-in-law sat behind her laptop, sending off an e-mail petition against the film to half of Tehran, while my husband leafed through a book on the Achaemenid Empire, noting that Herodotus had estimated the Persian army at 120,000 men, not one million as the film claimed. The morning newspaper lay on the table with the headline "300

AGAINST 70 MILLION!" (the population of the country). It was echoed by the evening news: "Hollywood has opened a new front in the war against Iran."

The timing of the computer-generated film, which depicts the ancient confrontation of Sparta and the Persian empire at the Battle of Thermopylae, is certainly inauspicious. It falls on the eve of Norouz, Persian new year, a time when Iranians typically gather in proud celebration, observing rites that date back over 3,000 years, way before Islam, to the age of Zoroastrianism, when their ancient land produced the world's first monotheistic religion. It is not a particularly welcome season to be portrayed as pillaging, deranged savages. Since the entire country will be on two weeks of official holiday, there will be no shortage of time to sit about discussing the slight and what it portends for Iran's current confrontation with the United States. For a people prone to conspiracy logic, the box office success of 300, compared with the relative flop of Alexander (another spurious period epic dealing with Persians) is cause for considerable alarm, signaling ominous U.S. intentions.

While the hullabaloo over 300 may dampen Iranians' holiday spirits, it offers common cause between people and their estranged government. Top officials and parliament have scorned the film as though it were a matter of state, and for the first time in a long while, taxi drivers are shaking their fists in agreement when the state news comes on. Agreeing that 300 is egregious drivel is fairly easy. I'm relatively mellow as Iranian nationalists go, and even I found myself applauding when the government spokesman described the film as fabrication and insult. Iranians view the Achaemenid empire as a particularly noble page in their history and cannot understand why it has been singled out for such shoddy cinematic treatment, as the populace here perceives it, with the Persians in rags and its Great King practically naked. The Achaemenid kings, who built their majestic capital at Persepolis, were exceptionally munificent for their time. They wrote the world's earliest recorded human rights declaration, and were opposed to slavery. Cuneiform plates show that Persepolis was built by paid staff rather than slaves And any Iranian child who has visited Persepolis can tell you that its preserved reliefs depict court dress of velvet robes, and that if anyone was wearing rags around 500 B.C., it wasn't the Persians.

It is going to take an act of foolhardy courage to distribute that film in Iran. It will truly be 70 million against 300.

BBC

Sometimes this video made me happy, sometimes it made me upset, and sometimes it made me sad... Overall it made me want to visit tehran

Click to watch

Before you judge a book by it's cover

Internet speculation has started in on rumors that America is about to attack Iran come April. They say we're going to wage war, and many American's are starting to look down on the evil Iranians living in their fair land.

Well here's a head's up.

I was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

I am a first generation Iranian who's parents came here during the revolutionary overtaking of the shah.

My family use to be influential, they never knew hardships before the revolution, but suddenly they were thrown into a country who's language they didn't understand, where racists sneered at them to learn proper english and leave.

My parents attended Oklahoma university where my father played football with people who called him a camel jockey. He made them laugh by calling them buffalo jock's in his thick persian accent. He quit the team when his football mates played a practical joke on my mother's brother and left him stranded in his dorm room with no clothes or phone for an entire weekend. He thought they were insulting him, they didn't realize he'd take it so hard.

My parents would take their textbooks and translate it to farsi, each word at a time, learn it, then translate their answers back to English. They formed a small family huddling together, explaining each paragraph they had deciphered to the group - they made up the top 10% of the class. Obviously this couldn't be right, Iranians beating the smart blond and blue's of OU?! No way. So they were separated and asked questions orally... having to stumble through translating the oral questions and answering back in a language they didn't know. The dean of the school apologized to them all... they all got perfect scores. My mother was so good in her math classes, her professors would excuse her from future lectures and exams because she broke the curve.

I grew up with my father's teachings, telling me to believe in god, to know he was always with me - but firmly told me that he would never choose my religion for me. He told me I could be whatever I wanted as long as I knew god was in my life. My mother always tried to push for me to realize I was a muslim... she'd sneak in little comments "you know we're muslim right? Not like them, but in our own way." - which would anger my father. No, he wasn't going to act like those religious freaks that kicked us out of his country, his daughter was going to be free, in any decision she made in her life.

My father would tell me of where he grew up. "Tehran is beautiful," he would say "you look out the front window and see white mountains, and the back window and see plains."
He would tell me of white beaches made of shells that you "can't walk on without shoes, the shells dig into your toes." My mother would tell me ghost stories from her life growing up in a castle. Tea with her great great great grandmother in a room long abandoned, her grandfather dying and coming back to see her if she didn't pray, sitting with her at night helping her go to sleep. She'd tell me of the castle cat which would sometimes bring her kittens and put them under her blanket for safe keeping while she roamed the house for mice.

I grew up with the picture of the shah sitting on my grandmothers table by the door. A shrine built to the old regime. The triple color flag with a lion, a crown and a sun sat proudly beside her Koran and her king. She played rummy with people I later saw in my college history of Iran course. I could never mention them, they were wanted "criminals" to Iran's new regime. The dreaded "underground" still supportive of the shah. Devils.

I was never allowed to watch what the new regime was doing to our country. My grandmother would sit and scowl by her radio trying to hear news on the one Iranian only radio station America had. She had to pay extra to listen, it was based in California. She'd cry when she'd hear of villages being attacked, more people dying. She wasn't allowed to call home.

I never met my grandparents on my mother's side. Her sisters married into the new regime to protect their family. They cry every time we can get a hold of them on the phone and they hear my voice. I'm told American accents are "hot" to Iranians, they tell me my pictures are beautiful.

When I was learning how to read, my grandfather would try to sit with me and learn. He always told me how bright I was, how I was so much smarter than him - I was always annoyed when he asked me questions and zipped through the answers. He stopped asking, and I had been relieved... He tried to learn again through my little sister's books 6 years later - careful not to ask her too many questions.

Later in life my father would tell me stories. "You know he was the head of the police? I would steal his car, and run around town with the siren on, when the police would catch me they would be so scared of your grandfather they would send me home with a warning. I'd drive away with the siren on laughing." I would stare at my grandfather coming home in his 7-eleven work shirt and try to imagine him as the head of police... I found pictures in my grandmother's closet of their wedding. Her dripping in gold, him standing proud with all his medals and cried at 15 - how could he go from such greatness to 7-eleven?

During the Iran-America soccer game a couple years ago, I rooted for Iran. The stands held an overwhelming number of people carrying the shah's flag. No not the new flag, with their Arab words on it and Muslim symbols, the old flag with it's lion flapping proudly in time to their chants. Showing the Iranian people of America are not the same as those extremists living and censoring in Iran, but but those that believed in the king. Who came here to escape the extremists inhumanity.

So now the time is coming where America is going to attack the regime I've been taught to hate. The one who sent my family here and allowed me to grow up free in a land where I was taught to be myself, and not listen or bow down to anyone else's influence, and what do i see? American's looking down upon the Iranians that live in THEIR fair land, and casting them aside as the same fools that are running the country over the in the middle east.

Well here's a head's up. I am an American, as are my parents. I am an Iranian. I vote and I support my military. I speak English without an accent, but speak farsi with a heavy American twang. I tell people who complain about America to leave, and I long to visit Iran's beautiful lands. I exchange christmas presents with friends, picnic on the fourth of July before watching the fireworks across the street from the monument, and I celebrate Eid every march 21 with my 7 S's.

HOW DARE you look down on people you don't know and try to ASSUME how they act or feel. As far as I'm concerned, if America can fix this mess, the mess THEY started by helping overthrow the shah so many years ago, and allowing his death by refusing him entrance for a medical procedure, I SAY BRING IT.

I want to see the white mountains and plains by my father's old house, I want to see the white sandy beaches that I need shoes to walk on. I want to see the castle that would've been mine had the government not confiscated it and demolished it for warfare training.

I want to see what would have been my home, and thank it for giving me the life I've been lucky enough to receive.

Picture's [Source]